Dave’s Reise nach Osten

I already stated that my texts are missing the view of women. Luckily I met a traveler who can provide it. Annika travelled overland from Berlin to Pakistan to study in Islamabad for a semester. (who calls me crazy anymore?) I am happy she provides a guestpost to my blog. If you like it, read more from her on her blog: traveleidoscopia.blogspot.com

From the eyes of a woman

„If I want to travel, I have to get a passport. To get a passport, my father or my husband have to agree on it. As they don’t want me to travel alone, I don’t get a passport. I’m trapped.“

The freedom of a woman or a girl in Iran depends a lot on the place where she lives (as not all of the places are as westernized as Teheran) as well as on the family (how much the parents allow). This is how I perceived it first.

One girl told me that she would love to travel but that her parents don’t allow it to her. Her only chance will be, as she put it, to marry an open minded man who let’s her go to travel. But finding such a person isn’t so easy in a gender separating society as the Iranian, where one of the first contacts with a person from the other sex is in university (besides the family relatives from the other sex that you might have contact with).And even if you get in contact with a possible open minded future husband: your parents will have to agree on him and what to do about it, if they want to choose or don’t approve your choice?

Women have relationships before marriage, but one women in Tabriz summarized what a lot of women I spoke to, expressed: „When you have a boyfriend before marriage, which most of the girls have, and you might have sex with him (which is forbidden), he will not marry you afterwards, because he thinks that you are a bad girl.“

But the daily problems go further than the decision about relationships. They touch the decisions made on a personal level for an independend life. It is hard for a woman to divorce from her husband without his agreement and renting an appartment is not possible without the father’s or husband’s permission.

A friend whom I was walking in the streets the other day told me about her brother’s wife. She had cysts and needed a life-saving operation. For this operation her husband had to sign a paper that he gives the doctors permission to make the surgery. Even before she went into the operation he was called again to confirm that he agreed on her being operated although she might loose her futility. And he was asked again and again how many children he already had and if he wouldn’t like to have more. (Well…how can he have more, when his beloved wife dies? Except of the idea of „replacing“ her…).

These are just kaleidoscopick minipixels out of the talks I had in the recent days in Iran with some women.

Friends and family asked me how I cope with wearing a hejab, the in Iran compulsory covering of your hair. It is just a piece of cloth. Wearing a hejab and a manteau for two weeks isn’t too bad. It is just some extra clothes that you have to get used to, despite the fact that most of the women wear the hejab more loosely than you might think. And by going into a catholic church in Italy you would also adjust to the dress code, I guess…

„It is not that we have to wear this“ said Afsane one day while pointing to the hejab, „or that we have to obey some extra rules and get along with our families: it is the whole society. Even if my family is open minded and I can do what I want, there’ll be neighbours, gossipping and rules that can make a women’s life hell here.“